B2B Email Marketing Analysis

As an email marketer, you know that each email you send out has a specific purpose. They have different targets, content, offers, promotions and of course, landing pages to offer the reader. This is because no reader or subscriber is the same, and to in order to stay top of mind, your email marketing needs to stay relevant.

Having said that, email marketing communications can be split into two broad categories – the B2C email (Business to Consumer) and the B2B email. We have already covered the B2C email in a previous analysis, so let’s get into the B2B email!

Business 2 Business Marketing (B2B)

Instead of trying to appeal to a person as with B2C marketing, B2B marketing attempts to appeal to a business or a team of people who want to use the product or service to assist their company going forward.

Let’s take a look at some of their attributes.

The B2B Target

Driven by business relationships

Experts or at least researched

An entire team, but niched

Extended buying cycle

Looking for a reliable business partner

Looking at business attributes rather than specific product attributes

Lets on more information than B2C targets

Driven by business relationships

Businesses are repetitive buyers. Chances are, if they’ve used your product before, they’ll need it again in the future.

Thus, it’s in the best interests of the business to find a reliable, quality service or business they can trust to go the extra mile – so prove to them you can!

Highlight your after sales service and support, follow up on their needs or interests and send them relevant content after your first communication. Drip email campaigns and autoresponders work wonders here!

Experts or at least researched

In B2B marketing, you’re dealing with professionals; people who are paid to be critical and objective.

You can assume that they’ve done their research and looked at all of your main competitors. Here, you have to give them hard facts and let them know of the competitive advantage you have over what the other options offer.

An entire team, but niched

B2B consumers typically consist of a team of professionals who make the final decision, or at least a person who reports to their superior. The chances of emotionally engaging a group of people with their own personas and tastes is near to none!

To counter this, make your initial contact’s job easy – give them statistics and facts to quote to their superior! Start with general facts that cover your market (EG: 9/10 businesses use email marketing) and end with statistics that make your business look like a good option (EG: our successful delivery rate is 94% – the highests in the industry).

Sending an informative, presentable email that they can forward to their CEO with little to no introduction means it has a higher chance of actually reaching the decision maker.

Extended buying cycle

B2B emails are not a once off communication.

You have to design your mail to follow up and nurture leads – remember, B2B sales are often more long term and profitable than B2C sales so you can justify the extra resources spent in taking care of a lead.

Be patient, persistent and positive!

Looking for a reliable business partner

As previously mentioned, this kind of consumer is looking for a business relationship more than an emotional engagement.

This is why you have to be responsive to their queries, flexible to their requests and make damn sure you deliver on your promises – on time, every time.

This way, you can assure any potential B2C consumers that you’re a partner that can be relied upon. Having a dedicated account manager or sales team dealing with your email communications can be critical to your success in the B2B market.

Looking at business attributes rather than specific product attributes

The last thing you want to portray to a B2B consumer is that the best quality of your business is how cheap your product is. In fact, B2B consumers tend to value the business they’re dealing with more than the product they’re offering.

I’m not saying this means you shouldn’t put any effort into your product offering, after all, what are they buying off you? However, businesses are investing resources into your brand – they want to know if something goes wrong, you’ll sort the problem out before it affects them.

Links to case studies, references and educational content work well as all these resources indicate that you’re willing to help grow your clients and go the extra mile.

Let’s recap what a B2B target is:

The B2B Target

Driven by business relationships

Experts or at least researched

An entire team, but niched

Extended buying cycle

Looking for a reliable business partner

Looking at business attributes rather than specific product attributes

Lets on more information than B2C targets

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Author: maryka.burger

Maryka has worked across multiple industries ranging from hard news journalism to digital tech companies and advertising. She is an expert at building online presence, and offers a wealth of knowledge on digital marketing, social media and automation trends to agencies and digital start-ups.